Once in my life have I conceived what might have been, if I had had the skill to paint it, an immortal picture.  It was thus.  I was attending a Christmas morning service in a big parish church.  I was in a pew facing east; close to me, in a transept, in a pew facing sideways, there sat a little old woman, who had hurried in just before the service began.  She was a widow, living, I afterwards learnt, in an almshouse hard by.  She was old and feeble, very poor, and her life had been a series of calamities, relieved upon a background of the hardest and humblest drudgery.  She had lost her husband years ago by a painful and terrible illness.  She had lost her children one by one; she was alone in the world, save for a few distant and indifferent relatives.  To get into the almshouse had been for her a stroke of incredible and inconceivable good fortune.  She had a single room, with a tiny kitchen off it.  She had very little to say for herself; she could hardly read.  No one took any particular interest in her; but she was a kindly, gallant, unselfish old soul, always ready to bear a hand, full of gratitude for the kindnesses she had received—­and God alone knows how few they had been.

She had a small, ugly, homely face, withered and gnarled hands; and she was dressed that day in a little old bonnet of unheard-of age, and in dingy, frowsy black clothes, shiny and creased, that came out of their box perhaps half-a-dozen times a year.

But this morning she was in a festal mood.  She had tidied up her little room; she was going to have a bit of meat for dinner, given her by a neighbour.  She had been sent a Christmas card that morning, and had pored over it with delight.  She liked the stir and company of the church, and the cheerful air of the holly-berries.  She held her book up before her, though I do not suppose she was even at the right page.  She kept up a little faint cracked singing in her thin old voice; but when they came to the hymn “Hark, the herald angels sing,” which she had always known from childhood, she lifted up her head and sang more courageously: 

     “Join the triumph of the skies! 
      With the angelic host proclaim,
      Christ is born in Bethlehem!”

It was then that I had my vision.  I do not know why, but at the sight of the wrinkled face and the sound of the plaintive uplifted voice, singing such words, a sudden mist of tears came over my eyes.  Then I saw that close behind the old dame there stood a very young and beautiful man.  I could see the fresh curling hair thrown back from the clear brow.  He was clothed in a dim robe, of an opalescent hue and misty texture, and his hands were clasped together.  It seemed that he sang too; but his eyes were bent upon the old woman with a look, half of tender amusement, and half of unutterable lovingness.  The angelic host!  This was one of that bright company indeed, going about the Father’s business, bringing a joyful peace into the hearts of those among whom